This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy: Review

In the last book she wrote before she died in July, Maeve Binchy once again created fully realized characters in quick, short strokes.

Maeve Binchy's A Week in Winter, Orion, 464 pages, $28.99

The late Maeve Binchy

By Deborah DundasToronto Star

Fri., Nov. 30, 2012

Simply knowing that A Week in Winter is Irish writer Maeve Binchy’s final book makes it difficult to start. This is the last fresh story we’ll read from this writer. Without even beginning to read, the end is already in sight.

Binchy died in July at the age of 72. She had finished this book a few weeks prior and was apparently just working on the final polish, which her editor completed. It makes this book poignant, and that poignancy is impossible to ignore.

Particularly since one of the first things a reader sees is the inscription “For dear generous Gordon who makes life great every single day.” It’s to her husband, Gordon Snell, to whom she was married for 35 years.

It gives one pause to feel for Gordon, to feel sad for ourselves, that we’ve lost this great storyteller. A former journalist, she had an eye for the telling detail, the ones that would give depth to a story, or turn a character’s life on its head.

But Binchy wasn’t given to sentimentality. While it’s fine to have a tear in your eye, there’s no point in lingering over it forever. Life must, eventually, go on, as must the books.

Article Continued Below

In A Week in Winter, Maeve Binchy has once again created fully realized characters in quick, short strokes. It’s a style we’ve become used to in books including Light a Penny Candle, Circle of Friends and Tara Road — part of the canon which sold some 40 million copies worldwide.

Chicky Starr was a young woman when, like many before her, she met an American traveling through Stoneybridge, where she lived on the west coast of Ireland, and followed him to New York.

He got bored with her after a while and left — but she didn’t have the heart to tell her family. So she stayed on, working at a boarding house for years, until she’d saved up enough money to come back to Ireland and and buy up the old genteel Sheedy sisters’ pile, Stone House. She planned to make it into a hotel and, along with various family members and friends, fixed the place up to something even better than its former glory.

Her first guests came for a week in winter — to enjoy the walks and the spectacular scenery. They came for different reasons — most need a break from some issue in their lives — and Binchy tells their stories one by one.

There’s Rigger, who’s redeeming himself after breaking the heart of his mother, Nuala. Winnie and her potential mother-in-law from hell, Lillian. John, an American actor traveling anonymously but his famous face gives him away. Henry and Nicola, doctors whose fears threaten to overshadow their desire to heal. The Walls, so focused on winning things for free they forgot to enjoy what was already theirs.

Throughout the stories, the old world of the west coast of Ireland is contrasted with the world of Twitter and Facebook, mobile phones and splendid, silent isolation. Binchy often, one thinks, inserts herself in some of the declarations of sensible, old-fashioned values. “What were women doing, allowing themselves to be sucked into a world of labels and trends and the artificial demands of style? Eva couldn’t fathom it. She had only two rules of style — easy-care and brightly coloured — and was perfectly well dressed for every occasion.”

Binchy is known for her hopeful, if not always entirely happy, endings. Miss Howe, for instance, a retired school principal, is truly bitter and mean. We find in the end that, perhaps, she has reason to be. But there’s no sympathy for her — despite tough lives, we all make the choice, ultimately, as to who we want to be. It’s a philosophy of common sense and wisdom, both of which we’ve come to expect from Binchy.

And, like us, most of the guests left knowing much more about themselves than when they arrived.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com